Fade
by xoxcrescentmoonxox
Summary: Emmeline is washed out now, faded and pale and grey as she stands, one of the very few members of the original Order of the Phoenix left. Fitting, she thinks derisively, that after all these years, the one to finally bring her down is one of her own.


**JKR says that Severus Snape had a hand in Emmeline Vance's death. I'm taking the direct approach, and also assuming that most of the Order members would know very little about the identity of the double agent - have suspicions, maybe, but nothing concrete. But of course, Snape could easily have defected doubly, in their eyes ... **

**Enjoy, and please leave a review at the end!**

* * *

Emmeline is washed out now, faded and pale and grey as she stands, one of the very few members of the original Order of the Phoenix left. Fitting, she thinks derisively, that after all these years, the one to finally bring her down is one of her own.

She isn't sure if she prefers it this way or not.

* * *

Fourth year, and Emmeline wears vivid Ravenclaw blue and laughs in the hallways with her friends. The war is far, far, far away, and even though she'll be graduating on the brink of the eighties, on the brink of the Dark Lord, she's ready to jump and land on her feet.

* * *

"You know too much," Snape says to her, and Emmeline meets his gaze defiantly.

"I always knew you were a traitor," she spits, and he glowers at her. It's just her and him now, alone in the center of the wild moors. It was stupid, really, for her to have agreed to come here at all. But it's a little late for that now.

* * *

First year, and Emmeline is filled with wonder at this new world she's suddenly been launched into. Her primary school back in London is nothing, _nothing_ compared to Hogwarts.

The candles floating at the ceiling twinkle down on her as Professor McGonagall places a wrinkled hat on her head.

_Lively little thing, aren't you?_ it wonders. Emmeline nearly falls off the stool with surprise.

_But with a mind like that . . . better make it RAVENCLAW!_

* * *

"What now?" she asks, at the end of Snape's wandpoint. "Why not just curse me and have done?"

"Don't—" His eyes snap dangerously, and he jabs the soft flesh of her neck with his wand. "Don't hurry me, Vance."

"I will if I want too," she growls, choking as his wand digs in deeper. "You can't control me."

"Oh?" A muscle twists in Snape's neck. "Watch me."

* * *

In her sixth year Emmeline Vance is washed out and beaten down, lost in the prejudices of the old Purebloods in her common room. The war is heightening, tempers are running high, and not only is she not treated like a Prefect anymore, she's barely treated like a _person_.

Her saving grace that year is the knowledge that horrors don't last forever; that one day soon the war will end. And if it doesn't, the dark side had better watch out, because as soon as she graduates, she's coming for them.

* * *

"You'll never," she tells him just to keep him talking, to delay the inevitable. "You know me too well. You're not that heartless."

"No," Snape agrees. "I've never been heartless. Only prudent."

He throws her to the ground, standing above her with his wand at her heart. Moor-grass prickles at Emmeline's back, and she twists beneath her old acquaintance's stare. It's time for Severus Snape to make a choice whose side he's on.

Emmeline might have more faith in the man's goodness if Lily Evans hadn't died long, long ago.

* * *

Fifth year, and Emmeline Vance is made a Prefect. She would never have known pretty Lily Evans of Gryffindor if not for that, but the sixth year sometimes has patrols on the same night as Emmeline, who smiles shyly at the older girl sometimes when she knows she's not looking.

They're both Muggleborn, both a little bit lonely, but they say barely three words to each other from September to June.

Emmeline says more than a few words that year to Severus Snape, a lonely boy who looks at Lily like she's his light. She feels a little bad for him, and often wishes that there was more than just one Lily in the world for him. Or even just an Emmeline.

* * *

"Prudence is as prudence does," she snaps from the ground, still defiant even as her heart races and her stomach clenches, every survival instinct she has at last kicking in. If only she had her wand, she knows she could beat the slimy traitor, but as is, she is helpless beneath him.

The man has no mercy, no love, no tenderness. It went to the grave with pretty Lily, and oh, how Emmeline wishes it hadn't, that he could recall some of that _humanity_ back now.

"Can you do it?" she finally taunts, helplessness giving her courage. "Can you really kill me?"

If she didn't know better, Emmeline would have said that at the moment, Severus Snape broke before her.

* * *

Second year Emmeline finally _belongs _in the Wizarding world. She gets on the Express like she's done it all her life and sits with her friends at the Sorting and helps the first years when they don't understand Potions or get confused by the Switching Staircases or are just homesick. Second year Emmeline is so thankful for this new life she stumbled into last year.

* * *

Whether Snape was breaking, repenting, changing sides, Emmeline Vance will never know. Because he draws his wand behind his head before she can blink, and he's toobloodyangry, and, oh, she _knows _she shouldn't have taunted him; she _knows _that Severus Snape will never back down on a tease—and she knows that she's about to die.

"Please," she murmurs as fragments of memory flash before her eyes.

* * *

Seventh year, and Emmeline has a goal. She _will_ help bring the Dark Lord down, because how else can she stay in this world of magic that saved her from reality? When pretty Lily Evans comes back, glowing and happy and newlywed, to ask people to join an underground resistance, Emmeline jumps at the opportunity, jumps headfirst into the Order of the Phoenix, and won't look back; won't _care_ about anything she leaves behind.

* * *

Severus would never say he was sorry, not to anyone when they were at Hogwarts, and certainly not to Emmeline. She knows that, but she sees—yes, she _does_, a little flash of remorse in his eyes that hardens a split second later.

"_AVADA KEDAVRA!_" he roars, voice breaking over the last syllable.

But Emmeline is already gone.


End file.
